Until the Last Gun is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight for America’s Soul, by Matthew F. Delmont
In earlier wars, African Americans were marginalized in segregated units and supporting roles. But in Vietnam, as Matthew F. Delmont writes, “the U.S. military depended on the service and sacrifice of Black Americans to a degree that was unimaginable just two decades earlier.” Some of this, he recounts, was from lack of the opportunities for deferment from conscription that were afforded to the middle class.
Delmont (Dartmouth College history professor) frames Black American responses to the war through the lives of Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife and collaborator, and Dwight “Skip” Johnson, a GI decorated with the Medal of Honor by Lyndon Johnson. She was a committed pacifist, outspoken in her opposition to the moral and economic injustice of the Vietnam War years before MLK broke with his cautious civil rights colleagues and condemned the conflict. Johnson was a kid from Detroit’s projects whose almost inevitable fate was to be drafted. He fought bravely.
Until the Last Gun is Silent is a reminder of the agenda Coretta pursued after her husband’s assassination, including such unfulfilled goals as guaranteed annual income for all Americans and shifting federal spending from defense to social programs. Delmont shows that there were antiwar Black activists from early on, and that like the rest of America, the tide of Black protest rose with the casualties. Johnson played the opposite role as an Army recruiter. He suffered from PTSD, and according to his wife Katrina, felt he was being used in a “dog and pony show” of corporate and civic banquettes. Despite his service, Johnson was never promoted past sergeant and was hard up for money. A VA study, Delmont reports, found that “simply being in Vietnam was as psychologically stressful for Black soldiers as direct combat was for many White troops.” In 1971 Johnson was killed while trying to rob an Open Pantry.
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His death was not meaningless and led to the push for declaring PTSD as a diagnostic category. His accomplishments never rivaled Coreta Scott King’s, but in twining together their stories, Delmont tells a history of the Vietnam War that has been mostly overlooked if not entirely forgotten.
